Re: fwd: FAQs, best practices, ESW Wiki

On the matter of control...

I thought that one of the features of a wiki system is that it's backed by 
CVS, so that if someone comes along and defaces the site, or makes other 
undesirable modifications, there's an opportunity to back out the 
changes.  Selectively.  Isn't that enough?

#g
--

At 16:34 17/09/03 -0400, Dan Brickley wrote:

>Nice work from Dan Connolly... (from the WebOnt WG list)
>
>----- Forwarded message from Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> -----
>
>From: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
>Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 15:29:45 -0500
>To: www-webont-wg@w3.org
>Subject: FAQs, best practices, ESW Wiki
>Message-Id: <1063830584.5534.492.camel@dirk.dm93.org>
>Resent-From: www-webont-wg@w3.org
>Resent-Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 16:29:50 -0400 (EDT)
>Organization: World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org/)
>
>
>Regarding...
>
>"ACTION DanC: Propose Wiki be used for FAQ"
>  -- minutes 11Sep
>   http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2003Sep/0163.html
>
>The subject of a FAQ list, best practice guides, and cookbooks
>have come up in this WG a few times.
>It also came up in the DAML joint-committee
>
>I'm sure everybody agrees that We Should have one of these;
>it's a question of how, when, who, and the like.
>
>The FAQ that went out with the OWL CR was written by Jim...
>   http://www.w3.org/2003/08/owlfaq
>   http://www.w3.org/2003/08/owlfaq.html
>   http://www.w3.org/2003/08/owlfaq.html.fr
>
>and edited by Janet and a few others in the W3C team.
>
>But that sort of W3C communications team resource isn't
>available on an ongoing basis, and I don't think Jim
>is volunteering to do it regularly.
>
>The best mechanism I've seen for documenting community
>wisdom in a scalable way is WikiWikiWeb. The European
>Commission funded some semantic web outreach work,
>and we used some of that funding to set up a wiki...
>
>   "ESW can stand for Evolving, European, Experimental,
>   Extended, Enthusiastic, ... Semantic Web, reflecting its
>   origins in the SWAD-Europe project, and affiliation with
>   the wider RDF / Semantic Web Interest Group."
>     -- http://esw.w3.org/topic/FrontPage
>
>I'll let it explain itself a bit more...
>
>[[[
>This is a WikiWikiWeb, a collaborative hypertext environment, with an
>emphasis on easy access to and modification of information. It is
>something of an experiment in WikiConsensus. In some ways the open
>nature of a Wiki is not that different from W3C's open, archived mailing
>lists. In other ways it is rather different (see BeesAndAnts), and
>perhaps more supportive of coming to consensus.
>
>You can edit any page by following the link at the bottom of the page.
>Capitalized words joined together form a WikiName, which hyperlinks to
>another page. The highlighted title searches for all pages that link to
>the current page. Pages which do not yet exist are linked with a
>question mark: just follow the link and you can create a suitable page.
>
>This wiki is particularly focussed on the SemanticWeb, but any W3C work
>areas are on-topic here. There are lots of other wikis (see InterWiki)
>which may be more appropriate for some subjects.
>
>It is good to speak in the community voice, at least when you have some
>idea how the community might think about a subject. It's nice to log in
>using UserPreferences, so people can see who made which changes. Browse
>this wiki and others to get an example of style and etiquette.
>]]]
>
>Last week DebM pointed us to a sort of cookbook entry...
>
>   Working with a closed world assumption in OWL/DAML+OIL
>http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/webont/HowToDoIt/closingRoles.html
>
>So I took that and integrated it into the ESW Wiki by
>creating a ClosedWorldAssumptions topic linked
>from SemanticWebArchitecture, and then giving ClosingRoles
>as an example of how to approximate support for
>CloseWorldAssumptions.
>
>I'm not quite sure I understood the closingRoles.html document.
>And the topic has already grown a disagreeing annotation.
>But I trust it will evolve to reflect community wisdom
>in due course.
>
>I hope to try out a couple more topics presently...
>
>   a recipie for ont:UnambiguousProperty, rdfs:isDefinedBy
>   From: Dan Connolly (connolly@w3.org)
>   Date: 05/16/01
>   http://www.daml.org/listarchive/joint-committee/0418.html
>and
>   http://www.daml.org/listarchive/joint-committee/0419.html
>
>I think the potential for synergy between OWL FAQs, RDF
>FAQs, URI FAQs, and XML FAQs is considerable. I had a good
>time moving a centrally-maintained list into the UriSchemes
>topic, and the synergy with topics like FollowYourNose
>is already apparent.
>
>Jim writes...
>
>[[[
>I have thought about this a while, I worry about a WIKI approach
>- we want to control some of this -- I think a WIKI page for users to
>be able to write/comment that is linked to a page maintained
>somewhere in W3C space makes much more sense.  I propose we consider
>starting this page as a WG, putting an "expiration date" on it equal
>to end of our WG (i.e. no commmitment beyond our chartered date) --
>we would then have an expectation that the new SWIG (if approved)
>would take this over, but we would have no commitment if they don't.
>]]]
>
>I don't want any more control than the Wiki gives me.
>
>Other folks in the WG could maintain pages in the
>http://www.w3.org/* space, as Mike does with
>the issues list and Jos and Jeremy do with the
>test materials. There's a certain level of tedium
>involved, but I suppose it might be tolerable.
>I have considered doing that, and the cost of
>having all edits funnelled thru one person
>(or a few people) doesn't look worthwhile to me.
>
>Lest anyone should doubt that this wiki approach can scale,
>yes, there are considerable risks
>(cf http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?CommunityLifeCycle)
>but it can also work amazingly well
>(cf http://www.wikipedia.org/). My position is: if
>the world wants a good OWL FAQ, the Wiki is the
>best available mechanism to create and maintain it;
>if the world doesn't want a good OWL FAQ, no centralized
>writing effort is very likely to change that.
>
>--
>Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
>
>
>----- End forwarded message -----

------------
Graham Klyne
GK@NineByNine.org

Received on Thursday, 18 September 2003 08:06:22 UTC